As conversations about literary representation evolve, so does the Stella Prize. Five of the 12 authors on the tenth Stella Prize longlist are Indigenous, one is non-binary, and genre is in the mix.
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Last modified on Sun 4 Apr 2021 19.40 EDT
When Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk, co-editors of literary magazine Overland, announced the shortlist for the magazine’s Nakata Brophy prize for Indigenous poetry last year, they received a letter of complaint. The point of contention? There were no men in the shortlist.
“We only had women and nonbinary entries,” says Araluen. “And it was our biggest year [in terms of entry numbers] for the prize.”
Only a few years ago, she says, female entrants to any poetry prize would have been hugely outnumbered by men – and Indigenous poets were few and far between.
Lachlan Brown.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Eileen Chong’s luminous poetry examines the histories personal, familial and cultural that form our identities and obsessions.
A Thousand Crimson Blooms is a deepening of her commitment to a poetics of sensuous simplicity and complex emotions, even as she confronts the challenges of infertility or fraught mother–daughter relations. Entwined throughout are questions of migration and belonging. Viewed as a whole, this collection is a field of flowers, aflame with light.